She winks. “You tell that grandfather of yours that Crooked Annie was asking after him.”
“I will,” I say, although I know I won’t. If I told him I was down near Carney, he’d want to know why.
I start down the aisle when I remember something and turn back. “Hey, is Mrs. Z still living in town?”
Lila’s mother. I think of how I hung up the pay phone at the sound of her voice, about the way she looked at me when she found me in the hotel room at Lila’s birthday party.
How for years I thought she saw some secret darkness in me that even I hadn’t seen.
“Sure is,” Annie says. “Can’t leave Carney, or that husband of hers is going to come after her.”
“Come after her?”
“He thinks she knows where that daughter of theirs got to and won’t tell him. I told her not to worry. She’ll outlast him. Ev
